The Central Intelligence Agency has announced a sweeping reorganization, introducing a new Directorate dedicated to cyber-espionage and establishing ten new cross-directorate ‘mission centers’.

The CIA’s new cyber-division will be called the Directorate of
Digital Innovation. It joins the four existing Directorates:
Support, Science and Technology, and Operations and Analysis,
under the new organization plan. Analysis is reverting to its
traditional name, having been renamed “Directorate of
Intelligence” previously, while Operations used to be known as
the “National Clandestine Service.”

Additionally, agency director John Brennan announced the
establishment of ten new “mission centers,” gathering CIA
officers from across different Directorates to concentrate on
specific subjects, regions or targets.

The 9/11 Commission criticized the CIA for not sharing
intelligence that might have helped stop the 2001 attacks, and
recommended a number of intelligence reforms. The new “mission
centers” will put together operatives from the five Directorates
to follow urgent threats and “fill information gaps”,
Brennan explained.

According to Brennan, the centers will be organized by region –
East Asia, for example – or by type of threat. The agency already
operates two such information-sharing centers, devoted to
counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism.

“I know there are seams right now, but what we’ve tried to do
with these mission centers is cover the entire universe,
regionally and functionally, and so something that’s going on in
the world falls into one of those buckets,” he told
reporters.

Brennan cited the need to adapt to the “unprecedented pace
and impact of technological advancements” as the
justification for establishing a new digital directorate. Its
mission, as Brennan explained, would be to counter foreign
hackers trying to penetrate US computer systems, as well as help
American spies steal digital secrets around the world, saving the
CIA a lot of “time, resources and energy.”

Cyber threats were the first type of threat on the list National
Intelligence Director James Clapper presented to Congress at the
annual hearing at the end of February. Clapper said that
cyber-attacks had been “increasing in frequency, scale,
sophistication and severity of impact.”

US intelligence agencies have blamed foreign hackers for several
high-profile attacks over the past year. North Korea was accused of hacking Sony Pictures in November,
purportedly over a comedy about assassinating Kim Jong-un. The
February 2014 hacking attack on the Las Vegas Sands Corp, the
world’s largest casino company, was blamed on Iran.

Critics of espionage and surveillance have argued the US, rather
than North Korea, China or Iran, is the real threat to
cyber-security around the world. “The real danger here is the
US, the superpower,” Kristinn Hrafnsson, spokesman for
WikiLeaks, told RT last month. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden
helped expose how the NSA and its UK counterpart hacked into the world’s largest supplier of mobile
phone chips.